[Repost] “Look What I Have” — A Guide to Anthony Brown’s Picture Book

A book that is about to be pub­lished, show­ing it in advance. Bird Hero’s intro­duc­tion is real­ly well writ­ten :)Orig­i­nal address:“Look What I Have” — A Guide to Antho­ny Brown’s Pic­ture Bookauthor:Han­miao Cre­ative Park

The edi­tors at Enlight­en­ment asked me to write the intro­duc­tion to Antho­ny Brown’s “new book,” Look What I’ve Got. Of course, it’s not a new book; for the author, it’s an old­er work, and for the pub­lish­er, it’s a new and excit­ing prod­uct. I’ve nev­er writ­ten an intro­duc­tion before, but for­tu­nate­ly, I’ve had some expe­ri­ence with chil­dren. Aji­a’s flu­ent trans­la­tion made it easy for me, a per­son with lim­it­ed Eng­lish, to grasp the sto­ry and delve into the human­i­ty behind it—children, too, pos­sess a full spec­trum of human­i­ty. I loved the two boys in the book, Sam and Jamie, and felt a sense of famil­iar­i­ty. Per­haps they rep­re­sent the two sides of many chil­dren’s hearts, or per­haps even my own. Thanks to Antho­ny Brown, you’ve made me think.
 
The sto­ry goes some­thing like this:
 
The boy Sam went out for a walk and Jamie showed off his new bike to him.
“Look what I got!” Jamie said. “I bet you want one, too.”
But Sam did­n’t show any envy or flat­tery. When Jamie was show­ing off, he broke him­self and his car, and Sam helped him up.
 
Jamie also showed off his new foot­ball, lots of snacks, and his goril­la’s new out­fit to Sam, always say­ing, “Look what I got!”
He was sure Sam want­ed it too, but Sam real­ly did­n’t want it. He was always so calm, and no one knew what he was think­ing. Jamie was always the unlucky one, being scold­ed by the admin­is­tra­tor, get­ting a stom­achache, and being chased and bit­ten by dogs.
 
Jamie was beat­en up by the girl and fell into the riv­er. Sam pulled him up, but Jamie still want­ed to be stub­born and racked his brains to think of some­thing to show off, but he no longer had the con­fi­dence.
Sam was unmoved. At the end of the pic­ture book, the author reveals that Sam is a child with a self-suf­fi­cient and beau­ti­ful heart, and he does not need what Jamie needs.
 
Alas, I didn’t explain it well, so you should go read the new book.
 
Intro­duc­tion to Look What I Have
Han Miao/Bird Hero
 
Sam and Jamie are two com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent kinds of boys. First, I don’t want to knee-jerk judg­ments about good and evil, right and wrong; that would be unfair to both pro­tag­o­nists. “Pos­ses­sion” is a chal­lenge for both adults and chil­dren. In the adult world, when one pos­sess­es a nice house, a nice car, fine clothes, and deli­cious food, one inevitably expe­ri­ences a surge of pride: “Look what I have!” Then, one becomes con­vinced, “I bet you want it too.” One judges oth­ers by their own standards—yes, there are no gen­tle­men or vil­lains here. Jamie’s endear­ing qual­i­ty lies in his will­ing­ness to speak freely, and Sam’s endear­ing qual­i­ty lies in his hon­esty. When it comes to hon­esty, the two chil­dren are equal­ly matched. Adults aren’t as gen­er­ous.
 
Good pic­ture books can give peo­ple a more com­pre­hen­sive world­view. Ana­lyz­ing Sam and Jamie is like watch­ing your own mir­ror image, pro­vid­ed that you try not to treat an inter­est­ing book as a moral les­son.
 
Sam is a boy with a strong heart, need­ing no exter­nal sup­port. Jamie, on the oth­er hand, is com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent; he needs numer­ous exter­nal things to prove his strength. This boy is a com­ic relief, a trou­ble­mak­er and a lit­tle los­er, always pay­ing the price for his van­i­ty. Because of his inner strength (though he’s unaware of it), chil­dren like Sam are able to remain unaf­fect­ed by the trou­bles Jamie throws at them. How­ev­er, such boys are dif­fi­cult to under­stand. You can’t tell what they’re think­ing, and their emo­tions don’t show on their face, let alone express eas­i­ly. For par­ents, chil­dren like Jamie are eas­i­er to han­dle.
 
When Chi­nese par­ents read pic­ture books to their chil­dren, they inevitably ask: Should we emu­late Sam or Jamie? Most chil­dren and par­ents like­ly lean toward Sam, as he seems more per­fect, while Jamie seems like a coun­terex­am­ple. But I doubt this was Antho­ny Brown’s inten­tion. He uses an enter­tain­ing, high­ly refined approach to depict two high­ly arche­typ­al human per­son­al­i­ties: one with a comedic real­ism (Jamie), the oth­er with a cool ide­al­ism (Sam). The author aims for objec­tiv­i­ty and non-judg­ment, like two box­es of choco­late on a super­mar­ket shelf, each pack­aged in a dis­tinct way, let­ting you choose. Imag­ine how dull life would be with­out peo­ple like Jamie! Jamie’s flaws are sim­ply more obvi­ous, while Sam lives in his own world. That’s all.
 
Let’s take a look inside Sam’s mind.
 
Unlike Jamie’s descrip­tion, where every thought and action is direct­ly stat­ed, Antho­ny Brown does­n’t explic­it­ly artic­u­late Sam’s thoughts. Through­out the book, this boy’s actions are almost exclu­sive­ly “walking”—“Sam went out for a walk,” “Sam strolled to the park,” “Sam walked past the store,” “Sam con­tin­ued walk­ing,” and so on. This boy tru­ly loves walk­ing, yet he walks silent­ly, head down, what is he think­ing? Under Antho­ny Brown’s mag­i­cal brush, ears grow on the wall, moose antlers hang clothes for hang­ing, let­ter slots on doors bar their white teeth, peo­ple stroll with fish, and so on. You could call this a mas­ter’s con­sis­tent tech­nique, but I pre­fer to see it as Sam’s own vision. Sam is a boy with a del­i­cate heart and a qui­et per­son­al­i­ty, yet he has his own per­se­ver­ance. He tire­less­ly walks (or strolls), and his vision of the ordi­nary world always adds extra­or­di­nary details, mak­ing it full of inter­est.
 
When I teach chil­dren, I always encour­age them to appre­ci­ate the sen­tient nature of all things. Every stone, every leaf, has its own expres­sion and sto­ry. See­ing with the eyes and feel­ing with the heart, the world of sen­tient beings is far more fas­ci­nat­ing than the so-called real world of cars being cars and hous­es being hous­es. Chil­dren’s eyes and hearts are open to this; they tru­ly believe the world is tru­ly col­or­ful. Jamie, on the oth­er hand, sees things from an adult per­spec­tive, using the new, the good, the more, the more pow­er­ful as a source of flaunt­ing, uncon­scious­ly falling into the trap of mate­r­i­al com­par­i­son. There’s no end to this; some­thing new­er, bet­ter, more numer­ous, and more pow­er­ful than yours is con­stant­ly emerg­ing, just like the girls dressed as pirates who took down Jamie. Jamie, how­ev­er, still stub­born­ly defends him­self, say­ing, “My dad’s tak­ing me to the zoo this after­noon,” but he remains a slave to com­par­i­son. In the last pic­ture, the author is no longer vague (although the text only has the sen­tence “But Sam was­n’t lis­ten­ing”), and direct­ly describes the world that Sam sees: his for­est is both a for­est and not a for­est, with all kinds of ani­mals appear­ing and dis­ap­pear­ing in it. This is a par­adise built with inner strength, and the joy is end­less, which can­not be told to out­siders. How can Jamie and oth­ers under­stand the beau­ty of it?
 
I was amazed after clos­ing the book. The numer­ous details designed by Antho­ny Brown through­out the book are by no means gim­micks irrel­e­vant to the theme, but rather a por­tray­al of the pro­tag­o­nist’s inner world.
 
A friend once told me this anal­o­gy: the pow­er of a lion ver­sus the pow­er of an ele­phant. A lion has sharp fangs and claws, and its mus­cles are stur­dy. But when it encoun­ters a lion with sharp­er claws and stronger mus­cles, it must com­pete fierce­ly, attack­ing her­bi­vores to increase its chances of pre­da­tion, and con­stant­ly ensur­ing its claws and mus­cles sur­pass those of oth­er lions. Final­ly, with luck, one lion will rise to become the king of the grasslands—a rare event, yet, under the pre­text of “in today’s fierce­ly com­pet­i­tive soci­ety…”, it has become the main theme of our edu­ca­tion for young peo­ple. We always empha­size lions and ignore ele­phants. Ele­phants are her­bi­vores, not harm­ing oth­er ani­mals, but qui­et­ly build­ing them­selves up to become giants, until even the strongest lions have to retreat. Who is stronger, the lion or the ele­phant?
 
Just like my analy­sis of Sam and Jamie, I’m reluc­tant to pro­nounce on whether lions or ele­phants are bet­ter. These are two dif­fer­ent ways of grow­ing up, and every­one has the right to choose. I’m sim­ply delight­ed to dis­cov­er that Sam and Jamie in this pic­ture book are two very dif­fer­ent kinds of chil­dren. One, like the ele­phant, qui­et­ly grows by build­ing him­self and nur­tur­ing his inner blos­som, while the oth­er, like the lion, is des­tined to grow up amidst con­stant attacks and set­backs. Even some­one as frus­trat­ed as Jamie can still grow. Life is fair. This is the mean­ing I derived from read­ing Antho­ny Brown’s “Look What I’ve Got.”
 
Oh, how frag­ile the mate­r­i­al world that is read­i­ly avail­able is. Let’s guide chil­dren to explore and cre­ate a wider world on their own. In this way, whether they become an ele­phant, a lion, or even a lit­tle white rab­bit, they will be suc­cess­ful!
 
A few bonus pic­tures: